Video Offers Glimpse of Trent Reznor’s New Music for BlackOpsII

A new video offers intriguing glimpses into Trent Reznor’s latest musical project. It’s not a new Nine Inch Nails album — it’s theme music for an upcoming videogame, Call of Duty: Black Ops II.

The preview above offers some tantalizing snippets of the dark, atmospheric audio Reznor created for the game, along with a brief interview with the notoriously secretive musician.

“I look at videogames as a true art form,” Reznor says in the clip above. “The chance to be involved in something like this is exciting to me. I feel it’s every bit as viable as music, or film work, or anything else.”

It’s not the first time Reznor has worked on a videogame; his band created the music for Quake, released back in 1996. Reznor also contributed to Doom 3 in 2004, but his musical contributions to the game were never realized. Nine Inch Nails’ 2007 concept album, Year Zero, was released along with an alternate reality game.

“The games have gotten more intense and more realistic, and more engrossing, and deeper,” Reznor, a longtime videogame fan, says in the clip. “Videogame culture has expanded into the largest form of entertainment.”

The story for Call of Duty: Black Ops II was co-written by The Dark Knight Rises writer David S. Goyer. The hard-rocking theme song for Black Ops II, composed by Reznor, recalls vintage Nine Inch Nails.

“There is a lot of reservation and angst and sense of loss and regret and anger bubbling under the surface,” Reznor told USA Today in a recent interview. “So it didn’t make sense to have a gung-ho patriotic feeling kind of theme song. It has to feel weighty.”

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